Inborn Capacity Research Articles

Empowerment-inspired patient education in practice and theory

AbstractThe Hillerod Programme has held empowerment-inspired courses for type 2 diabetes patients, in group settings, since 2003. The courses take patients through a 1-year programme consisting of three modules (4 days, 2 days and 1 day). The programme aims to help individuals to discover and develop an inborn capacity to monitor and control type 2 diabetes, and to realise why lifestyle changes are necessary. This paper describes the methods employed in the Hillerod Programme.

Major Theories of Personality Disorder, Second Editionedited by Mark F. Lenzenweger and John F. Clarkin. New York, Guilford Press, 2004, 464 pp., $55.00.

Major Theories of Personality Disorder, Second Editionedited by Mark F. Lenzenweger and John F. Clarkin. New York, Guilford Press, 2004, 464 pp., $55.00.

A midwifery model of care for childbearing women at high risk: genuine caring in caring for the genuine.

According to this paper's synthesis of research, three constituents of ideal midwifery care emerge. First, a dignity-protective action takes place in a midwife's caring relationship with a childbearing woman at high risk and includes mutuality, trust, ongoing dialogue, enduring presence, and shared responsibility. Secondly, the midwife's embodied knowledge is based on genuineness to oneself and consists of theoretical, practical, intuitive, and reflective knowledge. Finally, nurse-midwives have a special responsibility to balance the natural and medical perspectives in the care of childbearing women at high risk, especially by promoting the woman's inborn capacity to be a mother and to give birth in a natural manner. This midwifery model of care is labeled "Genuine Caring in Caring for the Genuine." Here, the word genuine expresses the nature of midwifery care, as well as the nature of each pregnant woman being cared for as a unique individual.

Archeology and the evolution of human behavior

Human paleontology and Paleolithic archeology both focus on the most ancient phases of human prehistory, and they often draw their materials from the same sites. Yet, since the mid-19th century when both fields were founded, their practice and theory have remained largely separate. As the 21st century dawns, human paleontologists are trained mainly in human anatomy or biological anthropology, and they take their theory principally from late 20th century evolutionary biology. In contrast, Paleolithic archeologists are trained to recover and sort ancient material residues, and their interpretative frameworks stem primarily from cultural anthropology. The difference in practice means that human paleontologists are usually ill-equipped to assess controversies in Paleolithic archeology and vice versa. The difference in theory is more profound, since human paleontologists unflinchingly attribute major morphological changes or differences to natural selection, mutation, gene drift, or gene flow. Paleolithic archeologists in contrast tend to ascribe major behavioral changes to newly developed cultural strategies or to population growth, even when the changes coincide with conspicuous morphological changes. Many especially reject biological explanations for perceived behavioral differences between modern humans and their immediate precursors, and some believe that such explanations smack of racism.1 Yet those who accept the reality of human evolution must also accept that some ancient humans must have lacked the inborn capacity to participate in historic human societies. Since we lack historic analogs for such premodern people and archeology cannot substitute for an eyewitness account, we can

Jonathan Edwards and American Indians: The Devil Sucks Their Blood

ONATHAN EDWARDS (1703-58), American theologian who for two hundred fifty years has terrified readers with his escription of an angry God, had little but contempt for Indian religions. When trying to refute English Nonconformist John Taylor's notion of an innate human capacity for religious knowledge, Edwards played American Indians as his trump card. What did Europeans find when they came to America and discovered a people who had had benefit of thousands of years to develop this in-born capacity for religious truth? Nothing but the grossest ignorance, delusions, and most stupid paganism.' As one might expect of a man not uncomfortable with paradox, however, Edwards's views over time demonstrated more nuance and subtlety than this harsh proclamation suggests. For seven years, Edwards served as a missionary pastor to Indians of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. During that period, he seems to have approached population he was enlisted to serve as a test case of effectiveness of work of redemption. His findings, perhaps not surprisingly, ultimately tell us more about his own mind than they do about Indians or God's work among them.

19th annual Frank Costenbader Lecture--the origins of congenital esotropia.

Congenital esotropia develops in the first 4 months of life in an infant who lacks the inborn mechanism for motor fusion. It manifests as an esotropia which is not eliminated by correction of hyperopia and occurs in an otherwise neurologically normal infant. The earliest practical time for surgery is 4 months of age. The eye is anatomically suited for surgery at this age and also, this is the earliest age that congenital esotropia can be diagnosed with confidence. The best attainable result of treatment of congenital esotropia is subnormal binocular vision. This result is more likely to be attained if infants are aligned by 18 months of age. Satisfactory alignment is produced in 80% to 85% of infants in one procedure with an appropriate bimedial rectus recession. An array of motor defects including DVD, latent nystagmus, oblique dysfunction, and A- and V-pattern appear at varying times after successful alignment. These associated findings are commonly found with, but are not unique to, congenital esotropia. The onset and clinical picture of congenital esotropia is satisfactorily explained by a theory first suggested by Worth that the strabismus is caused by an inborn defect in the motor fusion mechanism and aggravated by esotropital factors as suggested by Chavasse. In contrast to congenital esotropia, all other strabismus can be thought of as occurring on a secondary basis in a person with the inborn capacity for motor fusion, but who failed to maintain it because of conatal insurmountable strabismus (congenital third nerve palsy), who lost it because of acquired (postnatal) strabismus, who uses a strategy such as head posture alteration to retain fusion under favorable circumstances (Duane syndrome), who has intermittent strabismus with part-time suppression (X(T)), or who is maintaining alignment with nonsurgical means (refractive esotropia). For the future, I believe that advances in the management of congenital esotropia will depend on a better understanding of etiology leading to design and use of innovative nonsurgical techniques to discourage convergence and stimulate bifoveal fusion.

Failure to distinguish between people and things in early infancy

Whether or not babies understand the differences between people and things has been deemed crucial to psychological views of early development. However, only two studies have addressed this question empirically (Brazelton et al., 1974; Frye et al., 1983), neither of which reported statistically significant differences between the behaviours manifested by babies with a person and with a thing. Nevertheless, a number of psychologists assume in their theorizing that humans are born able to distinguish people from things (e.g. Trevarthen, 1974; Bruner, 1975). In this paper I describe a replication of the study reported by Brazelton et al. Eight 10‐week‐olds were filmed for two minutes en face with a graspable ball and 'chatting' with their mothers. Nine behaviours were coded. Results showed that babies opened their mouths and lowered their eyebrows significantly more and turned away significantly less with their mothers than with the ball. Further analysis showed that babies acted 'socially' in both conditions, suggesting that a 'sociable mood' may persist despite appropriate changes in infants' stimulus conditions. It is concluded that the ways in which infants experience their worlds cannot be generated by an inborn capacity to distinguish between people and things.

Empathy: its nature and limitations.

Empathy is usually regarded as an irreducible inborn capacity, operative from birth, for knowing the inner experience of another person without necessarily perceiving cues from that person about his thoughts or feelings. Merging of the type characteristic of early infant-mother symbiosis has often been considered the origin and basic component of empathy. However, merging is an illusory experience which cannot function as an active mechanism in the perceptual process, and the psychological structures needed for certain kinds of empathy do not commence development until eighteen months of age. The mechanism of empathy has also been ascribed to vaguely defined variants of identification. This is not a settled issue, but the idea is not compatible with a recent rigorous effort to define identification. The author offers a different theory of empathy, according to which empathy is a capacity that evolves with neuropsychological maturation and interpersonal interactions in the course of individual development. Empathy depends on sensory perception of behavioral cues from the object about his inner state. The empathizer compares these behavioral cues with one or more kinds of referent in this own mind which could be expressed by similar behavior. He then infers that the inner experience of the object qualitatively matches that associated with his referent. Limitations in the accuracy and scope of empathy are threefold: patients may limit or distort the expression of behavioral cues about their state of mind; referents available in the mind of the empathizer may be inadequate; and the inferential process is inherently uncertain. As a result, knowledge of another person's thoughts and feelings which can be acquired through empathy is limited. The theoretical understanding of empathy offered in this paper implies ways for improving empathic accuracy, especially by means of applying two or more kinds of referents to the same set of perceived cues.

Attention and psychological change in the young child.

This article began by suggesting that different processes are likely to mediate alterations in behavior and cognitive structure and that conditioning principles do not seem sufficient to explain all the classes of change. Although the acquisition of conditioned responses, the potentiation of inborn capacities, and the establishment of schemata probably implicate different processes, all three involve selective attention to sensory events, whether these events function as conditioned stimuli, releasers of innate response dispositions, or the bases for mental representations. Hence, better understanding of the forces that control selectivity and duration of attention should provide insights into the nature of psychological growth, especially the lawful alterations in cognitive structure that seem to occur continually as a function of the child's encounter with discrepant events. The heart of this article was devoted to this theme. It was argued that events that possessed a high rate of change in their physical characteristics, that were moderately discrepant from established schemata, and that activated hypotheses in the service of assimilation had the greatest power to recruit and maintain attention in the young child.

Mr. C. E. Stromeyer

HALF a century ago the practices used in the design and construction of industrial boilers left much to be desired in the way of scientific treatment, and it is no exaggeration to say that Charles Edmoud Stromeyer, as chief engineer to the ‘M'an-chester Steam Users’ Association, was a leading spirit in the process of transforming the existing art into something approaching an exact science. The reason is not difficult to find, sinco he possessed an inborn capacity for investigation and research, to which was added the experience gained during seventeen years as an engineer surveyor to Lloyd's Register of Shipping. During that persistent endeavour, which occupied thirty years, the city of his adoption was a centre of interest for those engaged on the construction and maintenance of boilers, for engineers from distant lands frequently called upon him and the pilgrimage continued after the year of retirement, in 1928. For this reason, a wide circle of friends must have welcomed the honorary degree of Dr. Ing. that was conferred last year by the Technische Hochschule at Aachen on its old graduate.

An Investigation of the Intelligence of Foster Children

THE purpose of this study' was twofold. Its practical purpose was to determine whether residence in a foster home appears to be of benefit to the children so far as their intellectual advancement is concerned. A more theoretical purpose was to determine whether the environment is a factor in intelligence or whether intelligence is determined entirely by the individual's inborn capacity. The bearing of the results upon the practical purpose will be obvious, so that they will be presented chiefly from the theoretical point of view. The investigation of the relative effect of inborn capacity and of the environment upon mental traits meets with serious difficulties. The major difficulty is that variations in environment and variations in capacity are commonly associated. That is, a child in a good environment is likely to have parents with superior ability. This makes it difficult to know whether to attribute the individual's achievement to the one or the other factor. In the case of foster children the environment has been altered. It may be possible, then, by statistical manipulation to determine whether this alteration has had an effect upon the children's intellectual ability. Accordingly a study was made of 401 foster children. A series of personal interviews was had with each child by the field worker of the study, Mrs. Blythe C. Mitchell. At these interviews the child was given the Stanford Revision of the Binet Scale and the International Test devised by Stuart C. Dodd. Interviews were also had with one or both of the foster parents. In many cases the foster parents consented to take the Otis self-administering test and a vocabulary test. On a specially prepared home rating blank,

Insect Behaviour 1

IT was on a Harmas (an untilled, pebbly bit of land) in Provence that Fabre, after heroic struggles, opened his “laboratory of living entomology, ” where, undisturbed, he might “pry into life.” “Never, in my insect-hunting memories, have I seen so large a population at a single spot; all the occupations have made it their rallying-point. Here come hunters of every kind of game, builders in clay, weavers of cotton goods, collectors of pieces cut from a leaf or the petals of a flower, architects in pasteboard, plasterers mixing mortar, carpenters boring wood, miners digging underground galleries, artificers handling goldbeaters' skin, and many more.” What a place for studying those inborn capacities for effective behaviour which we label instinctive! What disclosures this inimitable observer gives us—the sounds of the midsummer night from the tinkling of toads to the death-wail of the surprised cicada, the green grasshopper's strange banquet off her fertilising capsule, the quick and fatal bite which the “devilkin” or Empusa gives on the back of the butterfly's neck; the beautifully finished cupolas made by Eumenes wasps out of minute pebbles and mortar, and stored with half-paralysed caterpillars, the food for the grub which hatches out of the egg cleverly suspended from the roof; the way the glow-worm deals with snails, first chloroforming them and then drinking them, for the flesh has to be liquefied into a broth before it can be used. Fabres words suggest that the liquid passes up the hollow mandibles to the mouth, but there seems some doubt on this point, as may be seen by comparing the recent observations of Miss Kathleen Haddoh with those of Prof. Bugnion.